


On the Wall

by AssortedGeekery



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: DOINK, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-06
Updated: 2013-05-06
Packaged: 2017-12-10 14:35:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/787141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AssortedGeekery/pseuds/AssortedGeekery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a rainy evening when the hustle and bustle gets a little too much, Vincent retreats to a safe place and contemplates a wall of memories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Wall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eerian_sadow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eerian_sadow/gifts).



> Written for the DOINK Final Fantasy Exchange! My prompt was as follows: Vincent Valentine (at any point during or after the canon), why he can't quit his Avalanche friends even though he doesn't want to be so close to anyone. i'd like a piece that explores Vincent's thoughts and feelings on his team mates (or just one in particular). why doesn't he leave for good? what emotional attachment does he have for them. is there a relationship he's having with one of them that keeps him there? (if yes, any ship is good. I think Vincent is my Final Fantasy little black dress--he looks good with everyone.)

It was one of _those_ days. The kind of day where Vincent almost wished he’d never crawled out of the coffin.

 

It was raining buckets outside, a truly spectacular late summer storm that had come right in the middle of an otherwise beautiful Saturday. Which meant the kids were home, and now stuck indoors. And there were guests in the house as well, Barret _and_ Yuffie arriving within hours of each other without _any_ coordination. And _more_ guests, an impromptu visit from NeoShinra that had the lower floors of the house packed with Turks and their illustrious leader. And the roof in his attic was threatening to leak, the rain on the roof so loud he could hardly think and the kids downstairs so loud he couldn’t hear himself think even if he _could_ think.

He’d retreated to the attic for some peace and quiet, but found that the noise from downstairs echoed up into his room and made it worse, because at least downstairs he could separate the noises by moving from room to room. Now they were all concentrated in his personal space, and he was almost ready to crawl through the window and flee. Not that he could _fit_ without whisping, but it was an option.

Trapped and not in the mood to transubstantiate himself to soggy freedom, he curled on his bed and wondered why he bothered to put up with all this.

 

Then his phone bipped an alert, letting him know that he had a message. 

 

[Got shrimp. And bread. The good stuff. You in?]

 

He was fairly certain he’d never been so grateful for human contact in his life, but sent a reply pointing out that it _was_ raining cats and dogs outside. 

 

[No shit. I’m across the street from the garage door. Get down here before the old lady who lives here notices the thug parked in her driveway and comes out to beat me with her cane.]

 

Well, in _that_ case….Vincent cracked the window open, whisped out into the rain, and was in the car across the street in a matter of seconds, only slightly damp instead of drenched.

———————

In less than half an hour, he was perched on a barstool in the back of Cid’s hangar/workspace/garage/shop/apartment, watching Cid pile boiled shrimp into a bowl. There was already another bowl on the counter beside him, full of a wickedly red cocktail sauce, as well as two plates, and an empty soup plate for tails. 

“Here. No snacking until I get everything else out.” Cid slid the bowl over to Vincent, letting him admire the shrimp. Cid didn’t believe in wimpy shrimp, and had gotten his hands on very large calico shrimp, fat, sweet delicacies with blotched shells that swarmed in the waters off of Junon. 

“I’m not allowed to sample?”

“ _No_.”

Vincent sighed and dipped a finger into the cocktail sauce anyway, absently licking it clean while he waited. In the space of a few minutes, Cid added tall, condensation-fogged bottles of hard cider, a platter of homemade bruschetta piled high with fresh tomatoes and basil, and a small bowl of olives Vincent knew could not be found anywhere outside of Gongaga.

“Alright. _Now_ you can eat. And don’t think I didn’t see you stick your finger in that bowl.”

“I had to make sure you made it right,” Vincent informed him. “So it could be fixed if needed.”

“My cocktail sauce is _fine_ , dammit!”

“Yes, it is. And I made sure.”

—————————

Later, when dinner had been eaten, dessert had been lingered over, and Cid was snoring on the couch with the last half hour of a western movie playing with the sound off, Vincent wandered the hangar. Before Cid had lived there, he’d spent some nights sleeping in the corners to get away from the noise and bustle of everything around him. Cid had actually caught him at it one day, and from that point on, there had always been a bed somewhere in the hangar just for him. It was currently a hammock high in the rafters, where Vincent could sleep undisturbed even in the middle of the day while Cid worked.

The living area was scattered with photos, some of them featuring Avalanche and the founding members of NeoShinra, Most of them, however, were of Cid, Cid’s creations, and of Vincent.

 

Near the door out into the hangar, Cid stood with his arm around an oil-spattered Vincent missing a shoe. It had taken a year before Vincent had agreed to help with any kind of repair after that. 

 

In another photo, Vincent stood alone, holding an armful of rock squirrels and scowling at the camera. Cid had talked him into helping raise the little creatures after their mother hadn’t made it out of an engine before Cid started it. Marlene still had one of them, which she had named Lulu. It made a surprisingly good pet.

 

The pair of them again, standing knee-deep in mud, spattered with more of it, Cid wearing a lily pad for a hat. They’d crashed an experimental craft into a swamp, and Cid has insisted on a local farmer taking a picture o the two of them, and the smoking wreckage in the background.

 

Just Cid, stnanding with a collection of kitchen applicances around his feet. A few smaller pictures taken from various angles showed Cid being chased by those appliances, particularly a very speedy tea kettle. Vincent had stood out of the way and laughed himself sick as Cid tried to round all his creations up.

 

A picture of the back of Vincent’s head, and the Emperor Moth that had stopped to rest there one quiet evening on a camping trip. The wings were spread wide, covering most of his hair, and the huge eyespots glowed in the camera flash.

 

Cid, asleep on a couch somewhere, Vincent asleep at the other end of the couch, Cid hugging Vincent’s leg both as something to cuddle with in his sleep and as a defense against pointy boot in the eye.

 

Vincent, standing on a rock in the middle of a pond, holding Cid upside down by one foot. He had a very large catfish in the other hand, and held both prizes up with a very smug smile. Cid was soaked, muddy, and very clearly cussing at the camera.

 

Nine years of memories decorated the wall. It was humbling, really, to see his relationship with a single person grow so much….and to have the proof that he hadn’t just imagined any of it. He lived with Tifa simply because he couldn’t say no to her, but it was with Cid that he really _lived_. Cid didn’t care who or what Vincent might be at any given time, so long as he was a willing accomplice in whatever engineered or otherwise questionable activity he had planned at any given moment. He liked Vincent for Vincent…and he liked Chaos, Galian, Hellmasker, and Gigas for themselves as well, which meant that all of Vincent’s headmates were calm and quiet when he was in Cid’s presence.

 

On the couch, Cid snorted and tried to roll over. Vincent hurried over to keep him from rolling off the couch, and ended up having to lean against the arm of the couch and get comfortable when Cid grabbed his leg and hugged it with a sleepily blissful mumble. Flash’nDash, one of Cid’s many mobile assistants, raced over, took several pictures of them, and raced away before Vincent could catch it to delete the pictures.

Vincent sighed. It was another one for the wall.

 


End file.
